Of course by the time Whitley arrived, it was all over.
But then he already knew that, and so did Slade. The DI had filled him in on the slaughter over the car radio as Whitley was still ploughing up the M5. Thirty dead, fifteen mortally wounded. The local boys were all over it, as were the press. Slade was not happy, yet Whitley sensed he was relieved it hadn’t happened on his patch for once. Slade told him Tommy Wallace had heard the massacre during a cell phone conversation with his friend who was attending the festival. When Whitley heard how the festival crowd had turned homicidal, he nearly ran off the motorway.
“What the fuck’s going on, guv? This is all so—”
“Fucked up? Tell me about it. This is way off the scale. According to the Manchester boys, the mad bastards were tearing into each other with any weapon they could get hold of. It’s like that Jonestown incident where the crazy pricks offed themselves cos of some guru. We need to find this fucking guru, Trev. Do your best.”
“Do you want me to turn round, guv?”
“Why the fuck would I want you to do that? Muscle in on the local boys and get every scrap you can. It’s still our case, remember?”
Then why aren’t you up here leading it, you lazy fuck? “Gotcha, guv. Halfway there now.”
“Put your fucking foot through the floor. I want something we can use before the Burnley and Manchester Plod step all over it with their clumsy size tens. I would ask you to seize the film print, but the projectionist burned it before setting fire to himself in his booth.” His sigh crackled with radio static. “Grill the survivors. Liaise with SOCO. You know the score. You don’t need my fucking hand to hold all the time, Trev. And find out all you can about some bastard in a ski mask.”
“Guv?”
“One of the director’s hired killers by the sound of it. Wallace said he pushed a wheelbarrow full of work tools into the cinema and handed ’em out, like some hellish usherette doling out lethal fucking ice creams. I’ve spoken to the flat cap in charge in Manchester and the daft cunt didn’t have any answers. Make sure you do by the time you’re through. Back me up properly for once. Understand?”
“Yes, guv.” Fuck you, guv.
But by the time Whitley got there of course the Burnley and Manchester force were all over it with their size tens, and not only did they actually have some answers but they really didn’t look overly impressed by the arrival of a DS from Bristol.
The Greater Manchester DI was a thickset, no-nonsense bruiser called Maclean. He had a haircut and eyes that said “don’t cross me, you soft, southern wanker” and he had a habit of picking at his teeth with his tongue. But he had something very interesting to tell Whitley when he met him in the foyer of the old Cinema where the festival had been held.
“Never seen anything like it,” he muttered. “What would make them fucking flip out like that?” It was a rhetorical question. The DI was still obviously shaken by such a big multi-homicide on his patch, and Whitley could tell he wasn’t particularly interested in any contribution from a lowly DS. Whitley peered past him into the auditorium. Stretchers were still being brought out, though most of the bodies had been taken to the morgue already. There was a smell of blood and popcorn. Not a good mix at all. “We didn’t make it in time, even though we followed up your tip off as soon as.”
I’ll bet, thought Whitley. You didn’t get off your fat ass in time because you thought we were making a fuss over nothing, didn’t you? You thought—and I can read it in your bulldog face and squinty little peepers—you thought, bollocks to those southern cunts, what the fuck do they know? So you finished your tea, popped another éclair in your fat gob, let a fart rip and eventually strolled down here with a couple of sleepy PCs. That’s how it went down, isn’t it, Detective Inspector Maclean?
“It was all over surprisingly fast. Done and dusted before we got here. Just bodies, and people screaming in agony and terror. But at least the killing had stopped. Fucked up doesn’t cover it. Nothing we could do.” Maclean looked away, surveying the blur of activity that was the SOCO team. “And before you ask, your DI has already spoken to me about the film that was shown. It’s just ashes, along with the projectionist. Lucky the whole building didn’t go up when he poured whiskey over himself and lit the old Zippo. Whoosh. Crazy bastard. But as for how the film got here—I’ve been through it all with the festival organizer. All communication between him and the production company—Sinema Extreme or some shit—which provided the print was done by email. It arrived by courier yesterday. Sender’s address is a smoke screen, like the website and email address. Nothing to go on there.”
“You spoken to the survivors yet, sir?”
Maclean swung his tiny eyes back onto the DS. “What, you think we’re all grooming our whippets up here and cooking black pudding?” The northerner’s shock and confusion was transforming into anger now (something he was more comfortable with) and who better to vent it on than some lowly DS from Laaandon Taahn or wherever the fuck this asshole pounded the beat? “Course we fucking have! And I’m surprised your DI hasn’t come up here himself, instead of sending his sergeant.”
Whitley smiled mirthlessly. “We’re spread thinly, sir. In case you’ve forgotten we’ve just had a major incident down our way too.”
“You being cocky, Detective Sergeant? Because if you are you can fuck off back down to London and sip your pina fuckin’ colladas and pay five fuckin’ quid for your poncy Lattes, ya southern Muppet. We’ve got this covered. You’re just in my way, right now. Are we clear?”
“Bristol, sir.” He could imagine how Slade would have handled this no-necked bastard. They would have been brawling on the floor by now.
“What?”
“I’m from Avon and Somerset, based in Bristol, not London. Doesn’t matter. Sir, I know this is inconvenient for you, but my DI—who’s heading up this case as you know—has given me clear instructions that I need to talk to all the survivors. I really hope you’re not going to make that difficult for me.”
“Difficult for you, you uptight little carrot-cruncher? Fuck, no. Why should I bother? I’ve got enough on my plate without flushing your pointy head down the toilet.” He swung his back on Whitley, then changed his mind and came back for more. “I’m sure your DI will be interested to hear one thing we found out though. And I’m sure you’ll hear exactly the same thing when you interview the survivors.”
“What’s that sir?”
“Apparently there was some bastard dressed in a boiler suit who started the whole massacre off. One of your copycat killers I’m guessing?”
“Sounds like it, sir. Did he get away?”
Maclean smirked and stopped worrying his teeth with his tongue for a moment. “No he didn’t fucking get away, sergeant. This isn’t fucking Bristol.”
Whitley brightened. Maybe they could finally get somewhere if they had a live suspect. “So where is he now, sir? In custody?”
Maclean tilted his stubby head towards the auditorium. “He’s in there. But you won’t get much out of him.”
“Why’s that, sir?”
Maclean smirked again. “The bastard’s plan worked too well. Not only did the audience kill each other, they took out the bastard in the ski mask as well. Ironic that, don’t you think?”
Whitley nodded slowly. He really wasn’t going to find out much up here after all. “Sir, you mentioned a plan. ‘The bastard’s plan.’ Is that based on any evidence?”
Maclean worried his teeth again for a few seconds before replying. “You’d better go and speak to the survivors, sergeant. You need to get up to speed a bit. ‘Speed’ being a word you might need to look up in a dictionary, seeing as your boys probably all drive tractors on their beat down there in Wurzel Country.”
He turned and followed a SOCO back inside the auditorium. Whitley hesitated a moment and then went after him.
Just around the same time Tommy was about to get up from his armchair and find the parcel on his doormat, Slade was hearing a pretty unsatisfactory report over the phone from Whitley in Burnley.
Slade listened carefully as Whitley backed up Wallace’s statement that the festival crowd had actually turned on each other due to some unknown influence affecting their minds. Slade was more inclined to believe the vending machine must have been spiked with a nasty strain of LSD mixed with MDMA—either that or mass hypnosis—rather than the wild theories put forward by Wallace about the film itself being to blame. Slade was also very interested in details of the masked man in the boiler suit, whose identity had as yet to be discovered. Slade would have put money on him being another Eastern European though. He was almost as impressed with the irony surrounding the suspect’s death as his opposite number up north. But it left him no further forward in the case, and time was running out. The media were reaching frenzied point. The Super had given him 24 hours to get a solid lead in this case or he would be replaced. Slade finished speaking to his sergeant and paced the incident room, glaring at the DCs hunched over their desks. They were all working round the clock, and as yet, not one of them had dared complain.
When the call came from Jim Tavell, Slade was ready to hear something solid. He listened carefully to what the SOCO had to say, his face giving nothing away to the detectives who glanced up at him. He said, “You sure? Okay. That’s put the shit among the daisies. You find out anything more, let me know,” and hung up. He rang Wallace and got his voicemail. He tried again with the same result. He swore, rammed the cell in his jacket pocket and left the incident room.
He was driving towards Wallace’s house with not enough sleep and a foul taste in his mouth. It was eight thirty in the evening. At home, Tommy was almost finished unwrapping his parcel.
He’d been so distraught about what was happening with Wayne at the festival that he’d forgotten all about the item on the doormat.
It was only after he’d tried ringing his friend repeatedly and each time succeeded only in reaching his voicemail that he’d given up and dialled Slade’s number. If he’d suspected the Detective Inspector would have trouble believing his story he was proved firmly in the wrong. Tommy’s naked anguish had been responsible for that. He was a supporting artist, for God’s sake, not a proper actor—Slade knew he wasn’t exaggerating. The DI had moved into action straightaway, and after telling Tommy to stay put and keep him informed of any more developments, hung up and got on with sorting out the mess that was the Burnley Fearfest.
Tommy sat where he was for nearly an hour, dazed, empty, drained. Finally he roused himself, determined to fight off the despair. He needed to be alert, he needed to be ready. For what, he couldn’t have said, although he could have put a fair bet on at Lovetogamble.com that it was not going to be pleasant.
It was dark outside the window. He didn’t bother closing the curtains. Leaving the lounge to grab a coffee, he noticed the package on the doormat.
It was rectangular—VHS shaped—and that sent a dart of fear into his heart. He hadn’t ordered anything, certainly not a tape. He knew who had sent it before his shaking hands finished tearing the plain brown wrapping off. There was no sender address, no note inside, just a plain VHS Maxell tape with one word scribbled on the plain white label: JASMINE. On the carpet near his armchair where it had fallen, his phone went unheeded as Slade called for the second time.
He carried the tape to the DVD/VHS player tucked under the TV and inserted it without any more delay.
It wasn’t very long. It didn’t need to be. It looked like the same scene Wayne had described at the festival: a man dressed in inflammable gear with a propane tank slung over one shoulder and sporting a menacing fireproof visor of the type used for furnace and incineration work. Or used by sick maniacs in video nasties for torching women in their underground metal dungeons.
He had known it would be horrible, but the reality was so much worse. He resisted the urge to switch it off, but he had to know. He had to know what Wayne had failed to tell him—did the maniac in the asbestos suit really burn Jasmine, or was it just a movie scare? He stayed with it, all five minutes of it. He watched her squirming and wriggling, dangling naked by her wrists from shackles fastened to a hook in the low ceiling. Unlike its pristine metal counterpart in Don’t Go in the House, this room was hewn from rough stone, dark and dingy. Jasmine was pleading with the maniac, begging him to let her free as a crease in the tape scrolled down Tommy’s TV screen. Tears streaked her cheekbones with mascara, her eyes were wide and terrified, her body slick with sweat. Tommy cried too. He clawed at his face, raked his fingers through his hair like a mad person. He waited for the ordeal to end, for the killer to move forward with the wicked looking flamethrower he carried in his huge grey fire gloves.
The killer turned towards the camera—towards Tommy!—and held up the flamethrower, then casually ignited it. A tongue of flame licked out, steadied into a bright orange gout as the bulky figure turned clumsily around to face the girl suspended before him.
Holding the flamethrower in his right hand, the killer extended his left glove, stroking Jasmine’s smooth thighs. The hand moved higher, teasing the viewer (this little clip had an intended audience of one), fabric fingers investigating her private parts, tousling the short strip of pubic hair, caressing the lips below. Jasmine tried to twist away, but the hand gripped her hard between her legs, the big thumb holding her steady while the fingers explored brutally. Jasmine screamed in pain, in outrage. Tommy was panting now, the sobs breaking out of him. He stood up, fists clenched, wanting to, needing to turn away, but unable to do so. He had to watch this, his very own private video nasty.
The hand holding the flamethrower moved closer to her sleek, naked body. Jasmine’s eyes were fixed on it and the little tease of flame that puffed out from the nozzle. She screamed one last time, her vocal chords tearing. Then the screen went blank.
The tape was still running. Tommy saw another tear run down the screen. Video snow-blossomed, then cleared. A message popped into focus, huge, blood red capitals:
JASMINE IS ENJOYING HER ACTING DEBUT. SHE WILL ENJOY IT FAR MORE IF YOU COME AND SHARE IT WITH HER. BUT SHE WON’T ENJOY IT AT ALL IF YOU INFORM THE POLICE WHERE YOU ARE GOING. SHE WON’T ENJOY ONE RED HOT, BURNING MOMENT OF IT. DO YOU WANT TO SEE HER ALIVE AGAIN? OR DO YOU WANT TO SEE A CRISPED, OVERDONE ROAST HANGING FROM THIS HOOK WHEN YOU ARRIVE? YOUR CHOICE… MAKE THE RIGHT ONE. SHE’S WAITING. JOIN US. JOIN US AT THE VILLAGE WHERE NOBODY LIVES. YOU REMEMBER IT FROM YOUR CHILDHOOD I’M SURE. NOW IT’S THE HOME OF THE NASTY. COME ALONE OR JASMINE BURNS.
Tommy replayed the message once more. Hope mixed with utter dread. Was she still alive then, or was this just one more twist of the knife? Make the right choice, the message had read. But there was no choice at all, was there? He had to go, and he had to go alone. He switched the TV off and made for the front door, grabbing his phone from the floor and car keys from the hook in the hallway as he went. He saw the missed messages from Slade and dismissed them. He switched his phone to silent and left the house.
Outside it was very dark now. The dashboard clock read 9:01 when he fired up the ignition on the Polo. His headlights picked out the empty residential street. He didn’t need to consult a map, or plug in a sat nav. He knew exactly where he was going.
DC Pete Brack was dozing at the wheel. That was alright, though, because it wasn’t moving. The engine wasn’t even switched on. There wouldn’t have been much point, as he was on surveillance duty. He was supposed to be awake, alert, Slade’s eager watchdog. But five hours of sitting in this suburban street had taken their toll. Tommy Wallace was in his house and he wasn’t going anywhere, and Brack just couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer.
It wasn’t until Slade’s strident voice came over the car radio that he remembered sleeping on the job wasn’t what he was paid for. He jerked wide awake, cursed his boss, and reached forward to pick up the transmitter.
“You awake, Brack?”
“Course I am, sir.”
“Anything from Wallace’s house?”
“Nothing, sir.”
“I’m on my way over right now. If he goes anywhere, don’t stop him. Just make sure you follow him and report to me immediately.”
“Yes sir.”
“And Brack…”
“Sir?”
“If you fall asleep again I’ll have you policing my toilet with a brush every morning after I’ve had a heavy fry up. Are we clear on that?”
Brack swore again, but made sure the connection was cut before he did so. Across the street, Tommy was letting himself out of the front door. Brack nearly missed him. It was only when the Polo coughed into life that he looked round.
Fuck! Close one…
He waited until the Polo had reached the end of the street before firing up his own Peugeot and followed at a discreet distance.
Tommy had no idea he was being tailed. He was concentrating on keeping to the inner city speed limits while terror built in him relentlessly. The last thing he wanted was to be pulled over now. But soon he was escaping the city up the dark stretch of the M32, the night pricked with a scattering of stars. The rind of the half moon lent a curdled light to the fields streaming past him on both sides. The needle hovered around seventy-five. Another ten minutes and he was veering off the junction that opened onto the M4.
More fields, more stars. The lights of Bristol were behind him now. The M4 gave way to the M5.
Fear was his only companion on that journey. He knew he was probably driving to his death (and which video nasty inspired fate would be his?) but this was a course with no sane choices. He knew now that he loved Jasmine. You don’t really know her, a small voice in his head retaliated, but he ignored it. Refusing to answer this challenge was not an option. Fear pushed his foot down on the pedal, and fear yanked at his mind and heart.
Join us at the village where nobody lives. You remember it from your childhood I’m sure…
Join us…
Tommy knew that particular entreaty was chosen specifically to resonate (Evil Dead anyone?) Whoever created the message—and Tommy had a pretty damn good idea it was the bloodthirsty maniac known only as the Director—was clearly enjoying the game.
But who was he? And why had he gone to so much gruesome effort to target Tommy in particular? His overworked mind ran through the possibilities again and again, but none of them added up, or seemed ridiculously mundane in light of the atrocities committed. A video shop owner who received a sentence for selling videos banned as a direct result of his father’s intervention in parliament? That was beyond absurd. Somebody wanting revenge for some past deed of Tommy’s? But he had no enemies—apart from Mark Hamm, currently residing in the Bristol City Morgue. The leader of a cult of video nasty devotees who blamed him for the “sins” of his father? That might account for the obsessive attention to detail, but again, what exactly was to be achieved by all this horror? It was madness. And sometimes that was the only answer. Why search for logic in the insane? Or rationality in evil?
He dismissed his frantic reveries. He would know soon enough. When he reached the village where nobody lives.
And of course he remembered that. His friend had once delighted in telling him how he’d burned down one of the empty houses. A teenage prank that had cost him six months in a youth detention centre.
He barely slowed to take the exit ramp onto the same B road Slade had driven him along earlier that day. But the destination was slightly different this time. He thought of his father sitting up in his ruptured grave with his hands outstretched like a Big Issue seller begging for small change. He thought of Jasmine’s naked body twirling from the hook. The gloved hand exploring her, the excited tongue of fire from the flamethrower. The needle crept up to sixty five as he hurtled around bends and twists in the country road. He bypassed his home town, heading east. Seven miles. He’d cycled there as a boy. It wouldn’t take him long now. The needle crept higher. He didn’t care who tried to stop him now he was near his goal.
Only one thought riding him.
Jasmine. And the flame.
Brack knew he hadn’t been seen by the object of his stealthy pursuit. He kept far enough back on the motorway to avoid suspicion, and kept Slade in the loop. Slade’s Bentley in turn was maybe ten miles behind Brack, and catching up fast.
“He’s probably heading back home again. Keep me notified.”
“Sir.” Brack cut the connection before Slade’s evident irritation built up again.
The Polo was taking the Dursley exit, as Slade had guessed it would.
Brack followed.
Tommy guided the Polo through the narrow lanes, forced to drop his speed as he prowled through quaint Cotswold villages. Wortley fell behind, two houses and a post box. Then Hillsley with its pub frequented by old country hunters n’ shooters. He remembered the Inn from his teenage years. He used to sit in there with his fellow rebels, tipping out handfuls of change (just enough to buy one pint) and goading the landlord with their unruly presence, without quite tipping him over the edge to the point where he barred them.
Up the hill towards Hawkesbury Upton, and its more violence-prone pubs. This was farm labourer land, and the inhabitants of the ugly village were not renowned for their liberal philosophies. He hung a right at the duck pond, the moon floating in its dark water, and was soon descending a narrow lane overhung with trees. The moon was shut out immediately, and darkness pressed in.
Tommy hadn’t been down here since he was a teenager. He hadn’t been present the night his crazy friend burned one of the empty houses down, but they all used to come here fairly often, riding down from Hawkesbury Upton on their 100 cc motorbikes, glugging cheap cider from plastic jugs and flaunting the laws without even thinking about it, in a way only the young can.
Halfway down the steep lane Tommy steered the Polo into an open gateway and parked on the rough track. He killed the engine and listened to the silence. An owl announced its presence, the distant cries of sheep, nothing more. He sat behind the wheel for a moment, not moving. He could just stay here. He could stay here and live a little longer. Or…
He got out of the car and opened the boot. He pulled out the car jack and closed the boot again as silently as he could. He waited, listening again. Then walked to the road and began descending the hill, his breath fast, his pulse thumping.
The cell in his pocket throbbed. He didn’t even check it, and so missed his last chance to talk to his wife. He had turned his back on her a long time ago, one more missed call wouldn’t make any difference now.
He kept to the side of the road, hidden under the shadow of the trees. If his tormentor had expected him to just drive in like a lamb to the slaughter… Tommy reached the bottom of the hill, and peered round the last of the thinning trees.
The hamlet of Hawkesbury lay nestled in a dell surrounded by steep hills and woods. It consisted of four cottages and a manor house. Twenty years ago there had been five cottages until some idiot thought it would be funny to put a match to one of them. With the sole exception of the manor house, the buildings had been abandoned twenty-five years before when a severe case of sinkhole subsidence took out one of the cottages and nearly killed its occupants. The surveyors discovered an ancient cave system under the village that was threatening to swallow the whole hamlet, stone, chimney and gable, at any moment. That “any moment” had stretched out to twenty-five years, without any of the houses disappearing into the abyss beneath, but the signs of instability were evident. And even in the dim light of the half moon and a hand-throw of stars, Tommy could see the cracks in the cottage walls had become significantly wider in the years since his last visit.
Wire fencing and warning signs corralled the cottages, but this attempt at protection was showing signs of age too; the metal signs with their bright red lettering had slipped and rusted; the fencing peeling back or trampled to the ground by wind, weathering and uninvited visitors.
Yet despite its neighbours consisting of a decayed and crumbling set, the manor house had continued to be tenanted. The last occupant—and for all Tommy knew the present occupier too—had been a prog rock musician, big in the seventies, not so big in the decades that followed, but obviously retaining enough dosh to purchase the imposing building that dominated the hamlet.
Tommy scanned the cottages huddled behind their tatty wire defences, searching for any sign of movement. Nothing. The tall façade of the manor house was dark. He thought he heard a car engine from further up the road he had just come down, and pulled back under the trees to wait, but after a few moments of silence he turned to survey the hamlet again.
Where are you, you bastard?
Hefting the metal car jack, he stepped cautiously out from the tree cover and crossed a swathe of overgrown grass to the first cottage, preying the moonlight hadn’t picked him out to any malicious observer. The fencing had buckled here, and Tommy stepped easily over the portion that lay on the ground. He huddled behind the crumbling stone wall, his breathing the loudest thing for miles.
But if he stayed in hiding too long, might not the killer assume Tommy had rejected his challenge? What would happen to Jasmine then? He remembered the message on the video tape. A crisp, overdone roast…
He inched around the wall, peering into the broken windows of the cottage. Too dark to make out much detail, although he could have sworn there was a figure in one room, sitting in a chair in deep shadow. He froze, straining his eyes, but the figure didn’t move. It could have been anything, a coat slumped over the chair, a mass of cobweb? He moved around the corner of the house. The distance to the next cottage was fifty yards of potted, moonlit road. A large portion of the fence on this building had fallen away too. Tommy dawdled for five seconds, heart as tight in his throat as the crowbar was in his fist. Then he picked his way back through the gap in the fence and ran towards the next house.
He scrambled through the hole in the wire and thudded against the wall of the cottage, and a large piece of cladding slid free, shattered on the stone flagstones beneath. He closed his eyes as terror engulfed him, his breathing out of control, and waited… Waited. The silence continued. He opened his eyes, edged towards the corner of the cottage,—past another shattered window that revealed nothing but rot and shadow within—and peeked round. The last two cottages were on the far side of the dell, but they looked just as dark and dilapidated.
He looked towards the manor house. The front door was open.
He was sure it had been closed before. Had he been seen? Was this his invite? So what did he do now—continue to scrabble around the hamlet in the dark, or face his fear head on? But to go through that open door was certain suicide…
He thought of Jasmine, twisting and turning slowly, suspended from a hook in the dark. He thought of the man in the fire visor, itching to turn his flame on her.
Tommy sucked in a deep breath that reeked of mould and nettles and stepped back through the hole in the fence. Then he proceeded slowly, like a dead man walking, towards the manor house.
Brack had been following Tommy discreetly—a little too discreetly, he thought for one panicky moment when he nearly lost him at the Hawkesbury Upton duck pond. Which way had the bastard gone? He killed his engine and listened. There to his right, down the road that led to Lower Hawkesbury, he heard the grumble of an engine. Then it was gone. He switched on again, picked up the dashboard RT, and contacted Slade.
“Where the fuck are you now?” the gruff voice crackled at him.
“Still on his tail, guv. Going down towards Lower Hawkesbury.”
“Could have sworn he’d return to his hometown. Never the fuck mind. I’ll reset my sat nav. Not too far behind you. And Brack…?”
“Sir?”
“If you lose him…”
Brack switched off the transmitter and followed the sign, his car soon slipping into the thickest shadow he had ever known. (He was a city boy, the country made him irrationally nervous.)
He almost drove past the Polo, hidden as it was in the entrance to a farm track. He reversed, and pulled in behind it, switched off the engine and climbed out. Whatever fucking wild goose chase Slade had sent him on had better be worth keeping him away from The Star and Dove. Tonight was the Star’s Pub Quiz. Brack’s team always—nearly always—won, and he’d have been sipping free pints acquired from the losers right now. Maybe chatting up the tasty young (too young) barmaid, whatever the hell her name was… Instead of all that glamour and excitement, he was strolling down through a country lane in the dark, trying to keep his best Peter Bowers out of the frequent dollops of horse shit that littered the road.
What the fuck was Wallace doing snooping around in the back ass of beyond in the middle of the night anyway? Another thought, which was a little more disturbing than the idea of losing a night at the Star and Dove: what if Wallace had been involved with the murders all along, and Brack was now walking into a trap? Had Wallace realized he was being tailed, and led him down here into the dark on purpose? Maybe his homicidal accomplices—the freaks the survivors of the Malmesbury Massacre had spoken of—would be waiting for him too…
Why the fuck hadn’t Slade provided him with back up before sending him off here on his own? He hesitated, straining his ears for any sound, his eyes struggling to make out the shadowy road ahead. He switched his mobile to silent, and continued slowly down the hill.
The manor house was erected on a slight rise that made it seem even more imposing. Although it was only a much smaller replica of some of the country piles Tommy had seen around the Cotswolds, it was still impressive enough, in a pocket-sized nobility kind of way. The compact façade was grey and caressed with ivy. Three storeys of blank windows, a pillared portico and faux battlements spiking the night sky: the entire building reeked of contained decadence, nouveaux riche aspirations, and aristocratic pretensions on a reduced scale. Was this an example of irony on the part of his nemesis? To locate his squalid Video Nasty Empire in the very heart of picturesque, conservative England? Tommy suspected that was exactly the intention.
He stepped onto the pebbled driveway leading up to the house, and the open doorway was a dark tunnel ahead of him. It wasn’t until he was within ten yards of the entrance that he noticed there was light of a kind; a candle flickered deep within a large hall. At least, he guessed it was large as the flame only illuminated the table it stood upon and a few yards of marble flooring around it. Enough to guide him forward and give an impression of space, but not to show him who was waiting in the thick darkness inside.
He climbed the three wide stone steps to the portico. The silence was heavy on his ears. He couldn’t even hear the sheep now.
He took a last look behind him, then breathed deep and faced the door again. It was time. He remembered Gary Gilmore’s last words as he walked towards the firing squad. More than appropriate, he thought, as he moved slowly forward.
Let’s do it…